Letters: military cuts, Preuss School, Occupy and more

Thank you, Steve Breen, for understanding a very important aspect of The Preuss School UCSD, and presenting it in such a positive light. – Eric Romer, Teacher, History and University Prep/Coach, Girls’ Basketball, The Preuss School UCSD

Kudos to the Preuss students, faculty and UCSD. How to educate the underprivileged seldom gets addressed. This charter school shows us it can be done. It would be helpful to this reader if there were some follow-up stories comparing the results at Preuss with one of our city’s public high schools. Surely, there is something to be learned from this experiment.

Some questions that would help me understand the dramatic difference in outcome, i.e., 100 percent graduation rate. Are the Preuss sixth-graders chosen from a select pool of students? Does it cost more for the Preuss student than it does to go to Hoover or Mission Bay high schools? Is there more parental involvement at Preuss than other public high schools? What are the salient differences in the approach toward educating adolescence?

What the Preuss experiment shows is it can be done with great success. Can we expand the model to other schools? – Ronn Garton, San Diego

Left has lost edge under Obama

Van Jones expressed his disappointment in the sputtering Occupy movement in Dana Milbank’s column (“Left unoccupied,” Opinion, June 20). Unbelievably, he actually compared it to the civil rights movement, lamenting the lack of energy and conviction in the Occupy participants and thus their sputtering end.

What Mr. Jones and the far left fail to understand is that the funding of their never-ending social programs must derive from the taxes of hardworking Americans who get up every day and go to their jobs. After four years of President Obama those jobs have disappeared. American industry is apprehensive about their future and cannot plan for their future with the prospect of four more years of Obama. – Elaine Bradbury, Mission Hills

A user-friendly park

I was so impressed with all that Sally Bullard Thornton has done for San Diego (“Community stalwart pitches in with style,” June 19) but sorry to read that she is worried that proposed changes to Balboa Park would make it harder for the elderly to get to museums, when the opposite is true.

The majority of park museums and organizations support the Plaza de Panama plan to remove cars from the heart of Balboa Park, because it will not only be better for pedestrians, it will make it easier for the elderly and handicapped to get where they want to go. The number of close-in handicap parking spaces will be increased by making the whole Alcazar Parking Lot ADA-only. The new passenger drop-off and pickup spot, and the valet drop-off, will be closer to the Old Globe Theatre then the current ones. There will be more close-in parking behind the Organ Pavilion than there is now, and a tram if you don’t want to walk.

All of these positive changes will make Balboa Park more user-friendly for all visitors, young and old alike. – Sharon Gehl, Mission Hills